Why Doesn't Century 21 Canada Want More People Viewing Its Real Estate Listings?
from the someone-please-explain dept
A whole bunch of folks have sent in this rather odd legal dispute up in Canada, with real estate firm Century 21 Canada suing telco Rogers and its subsidiary Zoocasa for creating what appears to be a real estate info portal/search engine. At issue: Zoocasa apparently scrapes various real estate listings, including those from Century 21 Canada, to provide them in its own search results, along with some additional info -- but still links back to the original Century 21 listing. In other words, it acts like a basic search engine. It's difficult to see how or why that should be against the law.Of course, the real estate business has always been focused on bogus exclusions on data though the MLS system -- and apparently they don't like the idea of that data being more widely available. But, still, it's difficult to see what right Century 21 has to complain about, since the site links to Century 21 postings and should only provide them with more traffic. Unless, of course, its fear is that it can't compete by offering enough useful info on its own site.
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Filed Under: copyright, real estate listings, scraping
Companies: century 21 canada, rogers, zoocasa
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Realtors are the next travel agents
Yahoo tried it, but they failed as expected...
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Re: Realtors are the next travel agents
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Could it be...
Not to mention that if the 'portal' site happens to link to some questionable content, the feeling might be that Century 21 is tacitly condoning the website and the linked content.
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There will always be realtors ...
Some of the ways that these companies restrict what their rep can & cannot do may be ridiculous but the reps can always choose to change to a different company (or indeed start a new one, if they have the financial means).
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It seems to be industry wide
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I see where the problem is
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Idiots
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Re: Idiots
take them out and let them drown in their own inertia.
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Ummm...maybe they should look at revenues generated by, say, SELLING HOUSES as opposed to the ad revenue generated by the site.
They might find the latter benefit the people who administer their website, while the former benefits the people ON WHOSE BEHALF THE WEBSITE WAS SET UP.
Not a conflict of interest exactly...more of a failure of communication and prioritization.
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Great Site
If they serve your area it is a great site. They allow you to easily search for what you want and can afford and display the listings on a map. They also include a link to street view and other aerial mapping services. I think they just take all the info from MLS and attach it to a map.
Of course they are another realty company so there is always a link to contact them for more info (there are things in MLS realtors are legally prohibited from giving to clients) or for a showing, but you don't need to. I just used them to search for listings and used an agent that was recommended to me.
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Real Estate
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the real reasons
So it's not so much that Century21 doesn't want their real estate listings to be seen by more people, it's that they want to make sure that their real estate listings don't show up next to a listing where no real estate agent can make money.
Furthermore... real estate agents have access to MLS listings that are not available to the general public (yet). There's typically a small delay before a listing is available to everyone. This delay allows real estate agents to be on the lookout and hunt for prospective buyers without having to compete with the general public.
These methods are used so that customers who use real estate agents have an advantage over people who don't.
THAT is why Century 21 Canada doesn't like Zoocasa.
--GJ--
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Opt-Out Options
If they see a benefit to being on the site, there wouldn't be a problem. But some brokers appear to not want to participate. Unlike Google (and other real estate specific search sites like Trulia), ZooCasa refuses to remove listings upon request.
It's similar to statements you've made about newspaper websites and robots.txt. You can argue about whether it's smart for newspapers or real estate sites to participate in search engines. However, in the end, Google makes it easy for the original content owners to control whether (and what) content is indexed.
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Re: Opt-Out Options
> anybody to scrape information off the realtor.ca site.
> Zoocasa and Rogers are not accused of doing that.
My understanding is Zoocasa is getting listings off the web, not a site like realtor.ca. It is like a search engine for home listings.
In any case, what can you "own" about a listing? It is a fact the house is for sale. It is a fact the house has 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. The only thing you could own is the copyright of the description of the house (fixer-upper! OCEAN-VIEW!)
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They have done a wonderful job on their search engine but don't seem to have any traction on the back end with the actual buying of the properties. It seems the majority of the people still want their hand held through the entire process. Sites like redfin need to learn how to capitalize on that. Until then we are stuck with the antiquated realtor system.
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value add
Although in the end, I'd always wind up clicking through to the individual realtors site to further check out the listings and make contact with the vendor if necessary, having all the info in one place ultimately drove me to visit many more listings than I would have otherwise.
The 3rd party site just added so much value through better comparisons and filtering of data. Although the interface still needs some work in my opinion...
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Century 21 will bend to public pressure.
Threaten their fat commission checks and they'll fold.
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Realtors are losing
I am a Real Estate Investor...so obviously I can't afford to lose money by paying Realtors 5% commission. I would rather reduce the price by 5% and sell it faster.
I sold 2 houses this summer through private sites. I paid 0% commission.
There are so many SMART buyers looking for bargain, and you can only get that from a private sellers.
Centry 21 is scared of Zoocasa because if Zoocasa dominate the market, it can decide to do anything. Ex: index a private listing site.
That's the real issue.
Go FSBO Go!
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